The Priesthood of Christ, Part 1

Welcome to Delight in Grace, the teaching ministry of Rich Powell, Pastor of Grace Bible Church in Winston-Salem. Jesus entered into our experience so that by faith His experience becomes ours. Because of Christ, we gain access to a relationship with the great and holy God. Jesus is our perfect High Priest, one of us, but without the gruesome stain of sin. Fully God and fully man.

Our great mediator. Today, Pastor Rich looks into Jesus' role as our High Priest from Hebrews 5, 1-10. Let's listen to this message titled, The Priesthood of Christ.

What is this thing of Him as a priest? But when we consider that Christ came as a King, and He is, He did come as a King, and He is our King. When He came as a King, He came to rule a people. But in order to rule a people, you have to have a people to rule, right?

Am I right about that? In other words, you cannot be a King without a kingdom. If you're going to be a King, there has to be a kingdom. It's like one of the things I've learned in the many leadership seminars and classes and courses that I've been through is the thing about leadership.

If you think you're leading and nobody's following, you're just taking a walk. And Christ is, if He's King, there has to be a kingdom for Him to rule, otherwise He's not King. Here's where Christ as priest comes in, because as a King, He rules a people. As priest, He makes a people, a righteous people whom He rules.

And that is the significance of the priesthood of Christ. We are the people of God defined by His righteousness. It's not because we're extra special. It's not because we're good.

It's not because we've done better. We are simply defined by His righteousness. Therefore, we are His people. Therefore, He rules over us and He is our King, which is why very important that the writer of Hebrews says in verse 14 of chapter 4, seeing then that we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God. What we have here in the gospel of grace in the book of Hebrews is that He's allowing us to look behind the curtain, look behind the scenes of redemption and salvation. He says, this is what is going on behind the scenes.

This is the work that God has done. So let me just give you just a slight bit of a disclaimer here before we begin today. Sometimes when you come to a message, you want a rousing message, you know, it's like, now this is what we ought to be doing. This is how we need to go out and live.

Let me caution you here. There's not a lot of imperatives in this section of scripture. What He's doing is He's letting us look behind the curtain. He says, this is the truth behind the gospel of grace that defines you. This is what God did. So it's important for us to know this truth and to understand it as a foundation for our day to day. Let's allow the Lord to rescue us from letting church just become a spiritual how-to seminar.

Okay. This is biblical truth. This is God's truth. This is behind the scenes and at the very foundation of what defines you and me. This is the high priestly ministry of Christ.

Now, just a little bit of review here. When it comes to the priesthood, the very existence of it reminds us and affirms three things. Number one, separation, that God is an infinitely holy God and the radiance of His purity is a consuming fire.

And we, as rebels from God, are unholy, unrighteous beings that deserve nothing more than His necessary wrath because He is an absolutely holy God. And so our sin separates us from God. The priesthood, the very existence of the priesthood reminds us of that fact. The existence of the priesthood also reminds us that there is mediation, that God has provided a way that sinful, created man can interact with holy, infinite God through a mediator, through a representative. And then the third thing that it affirms is reconciliation, that not only can man through representation interact with God, but God has made means and provision for reconciliation to happen, that man can be brought back to God. And the existence of the priesthood, particularly the high priestly ministry of Christ, means that you and I can be in right standing before God. If you hear anything else today, please hear this. There's one issue and one issue alone for every human being. And the issue is this. Are you in right standing before God?

That's it. Thank God that He has made provision for us to be in right standing before Him. And it comes through the provision of His Son, Jesus Christ, who is our high priest in the very presence of God.

For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus. Now, as he is introducing the priesthood, he is again, the whole book of Hebrews is about the supremacy of Christ. And what he's presenting here now is a contrast in the first four verses of Chapter five, because he begins with the Aaronic priesthood. Now, Aaron was Moses's brother. And he was the first high priest.

And he is the one who had all the fancy garment. All of it had significance to it, representing the holiness of God and God's people set apart to him. And he is the one who alone could go into the Holy of Holies in the tabernacle and present the blood of the sacrifice for atonement. And there our sins would be covered. The sins of the people would be covered, not removed, but covered.

Very, very important distinction. The writer of Hebrews, then, is making a distinction here between the Aaronic priesthood and the priesthood of Christ, that it is a superior priesthood and it is our priesthood today, which is for us. Because in the Aaronic priesthood, it was mere men, simply sinful, created beings who were interceding on the on the behalf of their fellow man before God. And therefore, Aaron, before he went in and made sacrifice for all the other people, he had to make sacrifice for himself because he, too, was a sinner. Now, Christ presents a great contrast to that.

And what we have then is his call. And we see that it, he says at the end of verse four, in verse four, he says, no man takes this honor to himself, but he who is called by God, just as Aaron was. Verse five. So also Christ did not glorify himself to become high priest, but it was he who said to him, You are my son today. I have begotten you. Christ came by divine appointment.

The second person of the Trinity was dispatched to do a work that only God could do. Very important truth about this is that we look back in history, nobody denies the historicity, Eric Moser's favorite word, by the way, of the person of Jesus Christ. Nobody denies it. You cannot be honest and deny that. Here's what many people say about Jesus Christ, though, is that he is the founder of the Christian religion.

Yes and no. All right, because what we have here is that the second person of the Trinity has come and he, here he is, Jesus the Christ, he in the Old Testament was promised. He was foretold.

He was foreshadowed. And then he came in due time appointed by God as the reality of everything that was foreshadowed in the Old Testament. He is God's answer to the problem of human sinfulness, of human alienation from God. So really, he is not the founder of the Christian religion because the Christian religion is simply the worship of Jehovah, the infinite eternal creator God who sent a redeemer, his son, to redeem us back to himself.

All of that was planned before the world began. So there is a definite inadequacy to saying that Jesus was the founder of the Christian religion. Now, there's a divine uniqueness here also, because it says he was a priest forever in verse six, according to the order of Melchizedek.

Now that word order means kind. If you take the word order, for example, the order of the Aaronic priesthood, Aaron was the first one. And then when he passed away, there was another one.

When he passed away, there was another one. So there was an order of predecessors and successors, and that is the order of the Aaronic priesthood. That's not the right idea for Christ being a priest forever, according to the order of Melchizedek.

It's a word that means kind, the kind of Melchizedek. Melchizedek was a king. He was a contemporary king priest. He was a contemporary of Abraham about 2000 B.C. And he was not known in terms of his genealogy. And there is a debate as to whether he was an actual physical human being or if he was a Christophany, an Old Testament appearance of the person of Christ, the second person of the Trinity.

But Melchizedek in those days interacted with Abraham and Abraham gave tithes to him. And so he was considered a superior. But the order of Melchizedek or the kind of Melchizedek is just simply this, that he stands alone. He is endless. There is no predecessor.

There is no successor. And so he is a priest in that way. Jesus Christ did not come in the order of the Aaronic priesthood because those were mere human beings.

They were sinful human beings and they had to make sacrifice for themselves as well. And so coming as the kind of priest that Melchizedek was means that he is endless. He stands alone. He is endless and timeless. So we have then, as he came as a priest, we have his divine appointment and his divine uniqueness.

And then we're going to look at his experience now. Look at with me at verse 7, who in the days of his flesh, when he had offered up prayers and supplications with vehement cries and tears to him who was able to save him from death and was heard because of his godly fear. We're so glad you've joined us for Delight in Grace, the teaching ministry of Rich Powell, pastor of Grace Bible Church in Winston-Salem. You can hear this message and others anytime by visiting our website, www.delightingrace.com. You can also check out Pastor Rich's book, 7 Words That Can Change Your Life, where he unpacks from God's word the very purpose for which you were designed. 7 Words That Can Change Your Life is available wherever books are sold. As always, tune in to Delight in Grace weekdays at 10 a.m.